The Holographic Studio: Real-time virtual teleportation in Mixed Reality for enhancing design education

Abstract

With the rise of distance learning, remote design education is now being considered as a viable alternative to the traditional physical setting. Digital tools used for remote communication facilitate different types of interaction between students and instructors, and thus affect the ways in which we teach and learn. Therefore, their development is of major importance for ensuring high-quality remote design education. Owing to recent technological advancement in several fronts, we can now recast the traditional physical setting in a remote form, commonly referred to as "real-time virtual teleportation". Essentially, interlocutors can communicate at a distance while seeing each other as realistic three-dimensional holograms. To explore the possibilities afforded by these for enhancing design education, we have implemented and tested such a system in the context of architectural design education, as a pilot study. User feedback sheds some light on the potential of virtual teleportation to enhance design education in the near future.